We used to play a game that we called “Hop-scotch” out in the old sand-bank. In this game, you mark the sand off into rather large squares. Then hopping along on one foot, you try with your toe to push a pebble from one square into another.
I used to play a great deal out in the old pasture. It had a clump of cradle-knolls in it. A cradle-knoll is a little mound of moss.
On these mossy little cradle-knolls, checkerberry leaves and berries used to grow. How delicious those spicy young checkerberry leaves tasted! And we hunted those red plums as a cat hunts a mouse!
The pasture had two or three well-beaten paths in it, that the cows had made by their sober steady tramping back and forth from the barnyard lane to the growth of little trees and bushes and tender grass at the back. At sunset-time, two little barefooted girls would “spat” along those cool smooth winding paths after those cows.
As long as we kept in the paths our little feet were all right. But sometimes a clump of bright wild-flowers tempted us, and then two sorry little girls with thistle-prickles in their feet would come limping back. But out where the tender grasses grew there were no thistles, and such fun as hide-and-seek used to be among the bushes!
Sometimes we could not find the cows very readily; and then we would climb up on a smutty stump and call, “co’ boss! co’ boss!” until the woods rang.
In the spring, we would go a-maying out in the old pasture, and O, such great handfuls of the sweet mayflower as we used to bring home! Later on, we would gather great bunches of sweet-smelling herbs that grew wild out there, and carry them home to hang up in the shed-chamber and dry.
If one of my schoolmates had been unkind to me, I would go out into the old pasture, and there I would plan out for myself a lovely future wherein I should be _very_ rich and _very_ good to the poor. And my unkind schoolmate would be one of the humble receivers of my gifts, and so it would come about that before I got through building air-castles I would actually feel sorry for the poor schoolmate who had ill-used me. And then home I would go, singing and skipping!
1. Lit-tle Mo-ther Hub-bard sat In the park at play, With her gown and point-ed hat All of so-ber gray. And she looked so wondrous wise That I scarce be-lieved my eyes; And she looked so wondrous wise That I scarce believed my eyes.